Pierre Boulez, known and played all over the world, is considered one of the most influential musical personalities. The composer and conductor, died Tuesday night in Baden-Baden, Germany.
Beginners
Pierre Boulez was born “in a small country town” in Montbrison in the Loire, in 1925. When he chose to devote himself to music during the Second World War, the future director of IRCAM mourned a scientific career. “Did he 17, Explain to, I found myself master of my fate.”
He went to Paris, studied well and quickly, from one year only, in 1944, in the famous class harmony of Olivier Messiaen at the Conservatoire. He wrote his first works. In 1946, he earned his living by playing ondes Martenot the Folies-Bergere when Jean-Louis Barrault asked him to join his theater company to lead the music scene.
Boulez has no experience of conducting, but he learned on the job and uses this prestigious patronage to found, in 1950, the Domaine Musical where he has to Parisian public his vision of the contemporary repertoire.
The composer of avant-garde
Boulez wrote his first scores with the arrogance of one who is certain to make history ” Any musician who has not felt the need dodecaphonic language is useless, he wrote in 1952. For all his work is placed below the needs of his time. ”
Boulez looking fiercely, writing a radical and new music. He experiments. The view of Messiaen, shared by most commentators, Boulez was the only “greatest composer of serial music.” But if they can be challenging, the first pieces of the composer remain no less complexity and a repulsive austerity for the listener.
From 1960, Pierre Boulez is committed to a new way dominated this time by the influence of more moderate Debussy. This work on the stamps will lead to … Explosante-fixe … [1972-1994], or Répons [1981-1988], a work considered, correctly title as a result.
Pierre Boulez December 21, 2011 in Paris
afp.com/MIGUEL MEDINA
Modern
While he readily cites, by reference, the great artists who preceded him, Kandinsky to Musil, Joyce Mondrian, Klee Mallarmé, Boulez frequent structuralists, and Philippe Sollers published in the As Is. The theoretical utopia and fascinating music that accompanies plot, although according to Catherine Robbe-Grillet, witness, with her husband, from that time, it is not understood and even if he “endeavored to Boulez and his music snobbery fairs and leftist intellectuals” (Diary, 1957-1962) .
In the 1970s, Boulez will be called to lead the Institute for Research and Coordination Acoustic / Music (IRCAM), as well the Intercontemporain. The vanguard is institutionalized and is adorned with scientific virtues. Boulez’s prestige is only strengthened.
The polemicist
The career of Pierre Boulez is marked, from the beginning, for a total commitment and violent positions. “His musical talents and intellectuals, the apparent logic of his speech, the fury of his polemics, his art ‘inflate’ unsung geniuses known masters opposed to too help create a situation in which we must choose sides: to be with or against him, says Benoît Duteurtre. He is the champion of a system of exclusion. ”
Boulez The tone is sometimes shocking. Speaking of his time artists, he writes in the article Probability critical composer , published in The International Bulletin of Contemporary Music : “We are still in clabaudage of putassier horrible degenerate that their innocent unawareness makes vis-à-vis their filth. ”
At this time, even the music of his teacher Messiaen does not resist his diatribes: she became “vomit”. According to the testimony of Jean-Louis Barrault, Boulez “lived claws out, with the skinned. He spared no one, or almost. He was biting, aggressive, sometimes irritating [...]. But behind this anarchist savagery we felt in Boulez extreme modesty of a rare temperament, skin-deep sensitivity and even a secret sentiment. ”
The conductor
When it leaves the direction of the Domaine Musical Gilbert Amy, in 1967, Pierre Boulez is already recognized as head of orchestra. He led the Orchestra of the Südwestfunk in Baden-Baden, was invited to direct Parsifal Wagner, the venerable Bayreuth Festival. Between 1976 and 1980, there leads a Ring history on staged by Patrice Chéreau, with whom he will mount at the Opéra de Paris the creation of Lulu Alban Berg, another triumph.
Boulez continues an outstanding chef career: Cleveland, London, New York, where he succeeded Leonard Bernstein to lead the Philharmonic. It imposes it, here as elsewhere, his unorthodox gesture: ascetic, innovative, virtuoso effective – probably a good summary of the character. This management style stems from a surprising economy of means where the mind control to hands and arms without the body actually intervene: Boulez interpretations are intended primarily objective. Besides, he never leads to romantic music, probably too subjective to his temperament.
The star of disk
From his first recordings for Adès was touted its accuracy. In the 1970s, its discs recorded by CBS, the United States, have established new standards in the interpretation of the music of the twentieth century, that of Debussy, Bartok, Stravinsky, Webern and Berg.
Mocked in other older directories, it tackles with caution, Boulez also emerge as the ideal interpreter of Ravel, fascinating paradox, as this music seems opposed to the hers. In 1989, he recorded his great success for a new publisher, Deutsche Grammophon, Mahler and Bruckner address, and will continue to snub an important part of the twentieth century, Rachmaninov Britten, Sibelius Shostakovich.
International
The Cité de la Musique in Paris honored him in 2005. But, in inauguration, Boulez turns 80 outside France. In Berlin, he led the Chicago Orchestra and the Staatskapelle in the symphony resurrection Mahler. He then went on tour in Europe and the United States. Which says a lot about the ambiguous relationships, if not conflicting, Pierre Boulez has with his country.
In 1967, he even chose voluntary exile, an artistic choice dictated by the policy can not organize the hexagonal musical life in his own way, he violently opposes Malraux and only a few will return Years later, “recalled” by President Pompidou to direct new institutions created its measurement. Meanwhile, he settled in Germany in Baden-Baden, where he still owns a house.
The man of power
In the 1980s, the director of IRCAM and the Ensemble Intercontemporain chairman is also Vice-President of Public Establishment of the Bastille Opera, special adviser to Radio France, in September [former Arte] and la Villette, a professor at the Collège de France, director of collection by Christian Bourgois. He is the gray eminence of policy makers who have found the ideal partner in Boulez. Michel Schneider, former music director of the Ministry of Culture, is yet present scandal when Pierre Boulez as the official musician of the Fifth Republic in his book, The Culture Comedy .
Others see him as a bulwark against the mediocrity of thought and barbarism of popular culture, he castigates regularly with some courage (“The pop is like wallpaper” ). It is certainly all at once. And pursues his fights, especially for the creation of a large concert hall at the Cité de la Musique.
The Thinker
Finally, Pierre Boulez wrote little music, but wrote much the music. His theoretical texts, collections of articles, interviews or lectures have always accompanied his composing career. His Music lessons (Bourgois) are over 700 pages in his course at the Collège de France entitled “Invention, technical, language”. Boulez treats any depth of his compositional craft. The importance he attaches to the study of the phenomenon of sound perception proves he was able to realize, belatedly, of the difficulty of his music.
The misunderstood
Seventy years later, the work of Boulez has entered history, but it still does not really have its up to the directory or in the core of the public. Composer, conductor, theorist, teacher and man of power, Pierre Boulez will have known the singular destiny of these brilliantly successful careers.
The composer is arguably the first, since it is from her that will allow other. This is however not the best known. In the eyes of the world, Boulez was that precise and elegant chef, champion of the music of the past century ….
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